Thursday, 13 September 2012

Greece considering toughening Hate Crime Laws.

Battling with the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party that has 18 seats in
Parliament and has been involved in a number of assaults on immigrants,
the Greek government is planning to increase the penalties for hate
crimes.
The Parliament is also moving to strip immunity for all crimes that
lawmakers have, for the party’s members, some of which reportedly led a
raid on immigrant-operated stalls at a fair, and plans to remove their
police body guards.
Justice Minister Antonis Roupakiotis said racially motivated crimes
would carry a minimum three-year prison sentence, under judicial reforms
due to be voted on in Parliament later this year. Current guidelines
generally do not have specific provisions for racial motives in
sentencing, and prison sentences for assault are often suspended.
Human rights groups have catalogued a number of brutal assaults on
immigrants this year, with some tied to Golden Dawn although the party
has denied its involvement despite a platform that calls for all
immigrants to be deported and for land mines to be placed around the
border to keep out illegals trying to enter the country to seek asylum
or use Greece to get to other European Union countries.
“It seems like the Greek government is finally taking xenophobic
violence seriously,” Judith Sunderland, a senior Western Europe
researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Associated Press. “But we
need to see concrete action, not just announcements. We hope draft
legislation will be examined in parliament soon.”
The U.S.-based group, in a report issued in July, said it had
documented a rise in anti-immigrant attacks, including stabbings and
serious beatings, in Athens over the past two years, leaving dozens of
confirmed victims. Earlier this week, Greece’s government launched an
urgent inquiry into attacks by members of the extreme right Golden Dawn
party against immigrant street vendors, whom they accused of operating
illegally.
Four people were arrested in Messolongi, a town in central Greece,
for demanding document inspections from immigrant vendors, while a
police officer was suspended for allegedly participating in a Golden
Dawn-led attack on immigrants’ stalls in the same town over the weekend.
Roupakiotis accused the party of trying to cultivate a “neo-Nazi
ideology” in Greece. “We condemn in the strongest possible way every act
of violence, and especially actions by members and supporters of Golden
Dawn against immigrants or other citizens,” he said. “We believe this
is an insult to our long-standing notions of justice and the defense of
human rights. It is a threat to harmony in society and creates the
conditions to develop fascist and neo-Nazi ideology.”
Golden Dawn said it had taken legal action against Greece’s public
order minister and chief of police, seeking their prosecution for
alleged breach of duty, after police were ordered to stop and search
passers-by outside the party’s Athens headquarters. Police were also
investigating an attack on two Pakistani men in a barbershop in
Metamorphosi, northern Athens, in which a Greek taxi driver was stabbed
after apparently attempting to stop the two attackers. The store was set
on fire.
Nearly 500 racially motivated attacks were carried out in the first
seven months of the year according to the Migrant Workers Association,
as immigrants say that the rising wave of xenophobic violence has left
them afraid to walk the streets. The victims were in most cases attacked
with steel rods, knives and brass knuckles, the association says.